


Religion

by le_chat_vilain



Series: The Joker and the Thief [4]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Suicide Squad (2016)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, I have no idea how this happened, awkward fluff, coarse language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-16
Updated: 2015-11-16
Packaged: 2018-05-01 21:22:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5221241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/le_chat_vilain/pseuds/le_chat_vilain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Joker wrestles with his own conscience, leading to an unprecedented epiphany, and an interesting if not awkward conversation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Religion

**Author's Note:**

> No warnings this time except for awkward fluff? I really don’t know what happened here it just kind of came out like word vomit. It’s basically a bit of filler to set up some heavy angst for further down the track. The italics are obviously thoughts going on inside his head. I’m sort of experimenting with something here with this whole fic, so bear with me. I know that all the texts say sociopaths aren’t capable of genuine emotion, but I have always wondered if it was really impossible or just improbable. Basically, could a sociopath love another sociopath, or someone broken in the same way even if not to the same extent? Would it be love, or would it be something else altogether, a symbiotic selfishness whereby they realise that they make each other feel good, and so care for and protect one another simply to keep that feeling going because it is of benefit to them as an individual? This is the kind of bullshit that keeps me up at night.
> 
> Soundtrack: Religion by Lana Del Rey

_What the fuck are you doing? Why are you looking at her like that, stop it! STOP. FUCKING. LOOKING. AT. HER! She’s fucking with your head just get rid of her…snap her neck, just snap it, SNAP IT, SNAP IT, SNAP IT, SNAP IT!!! SNAP HER FUCKING NECK! SNAP IT! Do it before she ends up becoming Harley 2.0! FUCKING. SNAP. IT!_

 

We’re lying there facing each other, and he’s looking right into my eyes, or more accurately through them, through me; it’s like he’s just gone somewhere else completely. I can feel his arm twitching against the side of my neck, and a moment later his hand brushes my cheek and slips into my hair behind my ear, something he’s done more than a few times before by now and I’ve grown fairly used to. So why did I suddenly feel a wave of dread wash over me? Then there it is, I see my own fear reflected in his eyes. In an instant he recoils away from me, rolling over and spinning away to sit on the edge of the bed and rest his head in his hands.

 

_WHAT ARE YOU DOING? WHAT WAS THAT? YOU FUCKING PUSSY!_

_I…can’t. I can’t do it…why can’t I do it? What’s wrong with me? She’s just a girl…_

 

A long minute passes and still he doesn’t say anything, he’s just sitting there, breathing heavily and shivering occasionally. His back is a mess of backyard tattoos, and scars almost invisible against the paleness of his skin.

“At the risk of being indelicate, what the fuck? You okay?” I ask. It might have been blunt but I’m tired and to say I’ve had a trying day would be putting it mildly. I prop myself up on my elbow and wait for him to acknowledge me.

 

_EXACTLY! SO JUST DO IT ALREADY! WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? STOP THINKING WITH YOUR DICK AND KILL HER!_

_I can’t. I don’t want to…she makes me feel good…she makes me feel…_

 

“Hey, look at me,” I reach out and softly trace my hand down his shoulder blade and he flinches, turning swiftly and catching my wrist as it retreats. “Hey, hey, it’s just me. Just me. You alright?”

“I was gonna kill you.”

“Yeah, I gathered that, I mean you’re you and you had a knife to my throat. I’m foreign, not stupid.”

“No. Not then, well…yeah then too, but I mean just now…when I…” He looks despondent as his eyes fall to my neck. I’d assumed he meant that first night, but this explained that terror I’d just felt. Did it explain why he was looking at me like this right now though? I didn’t think he would ever shy away from a little casual homicide, and yet here he is looking completely lost.

“…but you didn’t.”

“Obviously.”

“And…ah…why not?”

“What, are you disappointed?” he asks with a twist in his lips, clearly trying to avoid answering the question.

“Well, I mean if I was going to get murdered by anyone, I guess I’d rather it was you, but you realise answering my question with another question isn’t an actual answer, right?”

“I…” he begins, turning around to face me properly. He looks conflicted, like he both wants to answer but doesn’t; or maybe he can’t. “I couldn’t. I can’t…I don’t…want to.”

“Well that’s good to know, I suppose.” The expression of complete puzzlement on his face tells me that this is a strange occurrence for him.

 

_JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE! YOU IDIOT! THIS IS FUCKING PERFECT! YOU LIKE HER. YOU FUCKING LIKE HER! YOU JUST COULDN’T KEEP IT IN YOUR GOD DAMNED PANTS COULD YA? THAT’S IT, WE’RE FUCKED!_

_Wait, what? Is that even possible?_

 

“I think I…” he mutters, staring off at a space on the wall somewhere behind me. Then he turns his bright blue eyes on me like he’s having some kind of eureka moment. “…I like you.”

“Umm…okay, yeah, I guess I like you too,” I reply awkwardly to his revelation. I’m not lying, I just hadn’t really thought about it much before, but now that I do, I come to the conclusion that maybe, yeah. He’s fun, and I’m at ease with him in a way I’ve never been with anyone else before; as cliche as it sounds, he gets me. Then of course there’s the unhealthy level of raw physical attraction I feel towards him; I haven’t quite pinned down where that super magnet is located precisely, but I suspect it’s probably somewhere between the glint in his smile when my fingers are wrapped around his throat, and the way the muscles just above his hips twitch when he walks.

“No, no, no, you don’t get it. I don’t like people,” he tries to explain.

“You seemed to like Harley well enough,” I point out, and immediately realize how much of a dick move it was to bring her up again after it clearly struck a chord with him last time. Yet he doesn’t even flinch.

“No I didn’t, I liked fucking with Harley. You know how she is, she’s so gullible and eager to please, I just couldn’t help myself, but God dammit she was so…Harley. I mean that voice for one, fuck…” I have to agree with him there, Harley’s voice was enough to make the Dalai Lama want to eviscerate her. “She was an escape plan that somehow both succeeded and failed. No. This is not that. I actually like… _you_.”

Sweet Jesus, I’ve managed to break a crazy person. He gestures at me in a vague sweeping motion and I feel oddly self conscious about it, though that could be because I’m still starkers. What does he mean he likes me? Surely he just means he likes fucking me, and I’m fine with that, I like that too. In fact, I fucking love that. Really though, someone like him capable of a genuine feeling? As much as I’d like to believe it, it seems unlikely to say the least.

“No offence, mate, but you don’t even know me,” I tell him. “Do you even know my name?”

“Do you know mine?” he counters.

“Do  _you_  know yours?” I come back with after a second, and we both start snickering. It wasn’t just a joke though, I actually want to know if he does; I mean would it surprise you if he didn’t?

“See, that. Right there. That’s it,” he says with a grin, biting his lower lip, thumping his hand down on the bed enthusiastically.

“…your name’s Blanket? Wow, I mean I knew Michael Jackson’s kids would grow up to be pretty fucked in the head, but way to be an overachiever, babe,” I yammer on barely able to keep a straight face, and he laughs even louder, falling onto his back and running his fingers through his hair.

“Didn’t my flawless moonwalk give it away?” he quips. “No, that, this, what we’re doing now, this back and forth…thing.”

“You mean, conversation?” I taunt, and he rolls his eyes at me.

“You’re actually making me laugh with you. Do you know how many people have managed that?”

I shrug. I really don’t know the answer, though I have an idea. Quick as a flash his hand grips my jaw, and for a second I panic until I remember what he’s told me. He pulls me down to him so that our foreheads rest together.

“You’re a member of an extremely exclusive club, sweetheart,” he whispers with a smirk, and closes those agonizing last few centimeters between his lips and mine.

“Why thank you, I’ll be here all week…” I smile into the kiss.

“Stay as long as you want.”

 

_YOU FUCKING IDIOT. SHE’LL BE THE DEATH OF YOU!_

_Shut up, shut UP, SHUT THE FUCK UP! I don’t care!_

 

“You know they’ll come for me, right?” I ask him. Selina will punish me independently, in subtle but infinitely more brutal ways than the others could ever dream up. She’ll try and talk them down, but she’ll fail, because there’ll be no letting it go for Pam. Pam will egg Harley on in the name of feminism, sisters before misters and all that, and next thing we know we’ll be up to our necks in crazy and man-eating plants.

“I’d like to see ‘em try,” he says.

I feel his hand on my thigh and he drags me over so that I’m straddling his hips. I sit back and rest my palms on his chest and just study him for a moment. How do I know this isn’t a trick? I mean I don’t really care if it is, it’s not like I have much to lose at this point, but I’m not stupid enough to discount it as a possibility. Is he using me to get to Harley? He knows I know her, but does he know how well? How much did she tell him back then?

“How do I know this isn’t just some trick?” I decide asking point blank is probably just easier. I expect him to look at me any other way than the way he is right now; thinly veiled hurt.

“Ouch…”

“Oh, come on, I’d have to be a special kind of stupid for that not to have crossed my mind.” He concedes me the point with a raise of his brow.

“You’re right, you don’t,” he sighs, “but really, how could I ever prove that it isn’t?”

In that moment his smile is gone, and he’s looking up at me in defeat, eyes searching mine for an answer that I don’t have yet. I know I should be cautious moving forward, but there’s a feeling in my gut that against all reason is telling me to embrace this, and that somehow I can trust him, of all people. Me, the girl who’s never trusted anyone in her entire life- not my parents, my friends, even myself half the time. Him, with all his labels – sociopath, murderer, terrorist. I know what he is, I know what he’s done, I know what he’s capable of, and still here I am, choosing to trust this man. Dangerously flirting with the idea that I might even have it in me to love him, and that he might even be capable of returning that love. Then again, maybe I’m just deluding myself into thinking I had a say in any of it from the start; after all, the heart wants what it wants.

I reach out and brush my thumb over the “J” inked into the skin on his cheek, and shake my head at him ever so slightly. Our eyes lock and memories of the shower flash before my eyes, along with those of not ten minutes ago, and a surge of that addictive electricity courses through my veins; the warm flood of a connection that goes so much deeper than lust. A connection with roots wrapped around the very core of one’s soul, undeniable, insatiable, and unbreakable.

“You don’t have to,” I utter in assurance. Accepting my fate, I take a running leap and fling myself off the cliff into the abyss, no hope of turning back, no plan for escape or even survival. I’ll ride the adrenaline rush. I’ll let his gravity pull me down and consume me until we crash into the cold, hard ground and shatter, all the while telling myself it was a choice and knowing it was anything but. I stoop down to plant a gentle, lingering kiss on his lips.

“What’re you doing to me, sweetheart?” he asks in a whisper.

“I could ask you the same thing.”

 


End file.
